Little Fox Cottage Read online

  "And you're Henry's friend."

  "Yes, I am. And I'll stay here for a little while, too."

  "And make me lunch."

  "Yes, I'll make you lunch every day I'm here. And the others will visit you."

  Helena clutched the two foxes to her chest. "But not Henry."

  HELENA FINALLY WENT TO BED. She wouldn't eat the supper Bree made her, of defrosted gazpacho from Henry's collection in the freezer.

  And she wasn't even coherent by the time the sun set. She had managed to take her pills from a little pill box on the dining table, and had undressed herself and put on a nightgown, but beyond that, there wasn't anything Bree could do to get through to her.

  So now Bree was by herself in the living room. The only guest bedroom had no furniture, and was obviously used for storage, so Bree figured she'd just sleep on the sofa. Helena had told her on the phone she could sleep where Henry always did, and that must mean the sofa, since there was nowhere else in the tiny house, except maybe the bathtub.

  Bree realized Maisy was sitting at the kitchen door, patiently waiting.

  "Oh. Time to go outside and do your business?"

  She opened the door for Maisy and the dog bounded out into the yard. It was twilight, so she could just make out Maisy's white patches as she wandered. Bree felt around by the door until she found a light switch. She flicked it on and the backyard lit up.

  "Oh!"

  The yard was overgrown, with a riot of flowers and weeds and vegetables gone to seed, everything growing haphazardly, overrunning the narrow sandy paths that wound this way and that through the large yard. But that wasn't what had made her gasp.

  On the right side of the yard, a rutted driveway ran straight from the street to the back. The driveway was two rows of aged brown bricks, probably just wide enough for a Model-T car. Deep green moss grew in the center between the two rows and overran the bricks, making the lines of the driveway just barely visible.

  At the end of the driveway, like Emerald City at the end of the yellow brick road, stood a cottage. Not just any cottage, but a twin of Vixen. A miniature twin, with every detail to match, from the front door and the crooked windows, to the terracotta color of the stucco and the chocolate roof tiles.

  Just like the big house, she thought, finding it odd to think of the cottage as a big house. But compared to the little cottage at the end of the driveway, Vixen cottage was huge. She left Maisy exploring the yard and made her own way through the sandy paths to the miniature cottage.

  The side that faced the driveway was identical to Vixen, down to a little square of brown tiles making a checkerboard patio by the front door. But when she was right in front of it, she realized the "twinning" of the cottage was all illusion. The front of it had exactly the same features, from front door to wavy glass windows to little iron sconces hanging on the wall. But it was all tiny. The patio was barely big enough to stand on, and the front door was only about three feet high.

  She bent down to try it and it swung open into what looked like a dark cabinet. The windows were real, too, but also mini versions of the ones on the big house.

  She walked all around it, fascinated. Then she found the trick of it.

  On the back of it, the side that faced away from the street and the main house, there was a normal-sized door by a normal-sized little brick patio. The little patio must get the sun. There were pots of flowers all withered and dead. It looked like Helena had just suddenly stopped caring for the yard, because some of the plants still had flowers on them, brown and dead.

  She tried the door. It came open and she went inside. The inside was not an exact copy like the outside had been. Instead it was outfitted as a perfect little studio apartment.

  Boxes were stacked over by a built-in corner desk. She recognized the box labels. These were Henry's things the movers had brought from Sacramento.

  There was a kitchenette in another corner, with a half-size fridge, a little sink just big enough to hold a dinner plate, and a tiny stove that had two burners and an oven that wouldn't roast anything much larger than a baked potato. The stove was black enamel, unlike the Chambers stove in the house, and was newer. The cabinetry was a beautiful natural reddish tone, redwood maybe. The little counter was also of polished wood, and there was a window over the sink that she realized was the one next to the mini front door.

  But where was that little door?

  Below the sink was skirting of red-checked cotton. She started to push it aside when something behind the curtain moved, and she jumped back.

  Then Maisy's goofy face peered between the gaps in the curtain.

  "A dog door!" she said, and Maisy came in and licked her hand as if to say, "of course."

  Then Maisy walked over to the other side of the room and lay down on the rug in front of a corner fireplace as if she were very familiar with this place. This must be where Henry stayed when he visited.

  "You like it, huh, Girl?"

  Bree went over to the fireplace and noticed that it, too, was a twin of the big one in the house. But this one had a different tile pattern surrounding the firebox. Where the house fireplace had a fox mother and two babies, this one just had the two babies playing across the top on a series of four tiles. Of course. A fox mother was called a vixen and the babies were called kits.

  Vixen & Kits were the two cottages. And the twin fox kits were the red-headed Lassiter twins. That's what Helena had meant.

  Only one kit was left, she'd said. That meant that Helena, despite her dementia, understood that Henry was dead.

  HER PHONE BEEPED. She checked it and saw a text from an unknown number.

  WHERE ARE YOU? —NICO.

  IN KITS, she replied.

  YOU FOUND IT.

  She sat down on a daybed across from the fireplace. YES. IT'S AMAZING.

  THANKS FOR TODAY.

  THANK YOU FOR GETTING ME UNSTUCK.

  THANK YOU, he texted.

  FOR WHAT?

  WILL EXPLAIN LATER, he wrote. HAVE A GOOD EVENING. SLEEP WELL.

  GOOD NIGHT.

  IT WASN'T LATE, but it was chilly in the little cottage. She noticed there was a fire laid out in the fireplace, with wadded newspaper under it, all ready to be lit. She found a box of matches on the mantle and lit one, then set the newspaper ablaze.

  This was Henry's fire, no doubt prepared by him for his visit this week. Everything about this place was part of him. This wasn't her home, it was his, but it felt like it was hers, too.

  Maisy stretched out on the rug in front of the fire as the room warmed up. They had both been through a lot in the last few days.

  And this day had been one of so many ups and downs: the adorable cottage—filled with her dead friend's possessions. The kiss from Nico—and Helena's tears. The charm of the mission church—with the questions about Henry's heart attack. Mel at the fish shack, his funny rudeness, and his wonderful food. All up and down.

  The room was quickly getting too warm. She opened a window over the daybed. The place, which had been so quiet, now filled with the sounds of the evening.

  In the distance she heard the sound of a bat striking a baseball and the cheer of a crowd. The cheer from a small town baseball game on a cool spring night may have been one of the most enticing sounds she'd ever heard.

  It spoke of people all knowing one another and gathering together on this Friday evening to cheer for their hometown kids. A muffled voice over a loudspeaker was shouting. She couldn't make out the words, but could hear the excitement of a hit for the home team.

  The scent of Henry's Cécile Brünner rose wafted in on the evening breeze. Maisy lay at her feet and snored. She felt... what did she feel? Grief and joy, excitement and confusion, solitude and yet somehow a connection to this town that had yesterday been only a dream told in Henry's voice while they worked in the kitchen. Now Pajaro Bay was, at least temporarily, her home. What would tomorrow bring? She had no idea, but she was sure it wouldn't be dull.

  HOURS later she still cou
ldn't go to sleep. She was too wound up by everything to settle down and rest.

  She wandered around the little cottage, looking in the kitchen cabinets (half-empty jar of peanut butter, soda crackers). Next came the fireplace mantle (flashlight, a glass vase filled with beach sand, and a rusty fishing reel).

  Finally she sat down at the desk and shuffled the papers there. The first thing to catch her eye was a photograph, loose, not in a frame. A large color photo, maybe eight by ten, with a yellow tint to it, maybe from age. Must be from age, because it was an old picture, of a bunch of kids outside somewhere.

  It was the wharf. She recognized the railing as the same one she'd been leaning against just this afternoon. The kids held fishing poles, and one, a little dark-haired girl with a serious expression, stood in the center, holding a great big fish in her hands.

  Next to her stood Helena and Henry. She'd recognize them anywhere: a couple of chubby-faced, redheaded kids, with grins a mile wide.

  Bree touched the image of the little boy Henry just barely with her fingertip. The twins, young and happy on a summer day in Pajaro Bay. How long ago that was.

  Who were the other kids in the picture?

  She looked them over. There were a pair of boys, obviously brothers, with dark curls and vivid green eyes. Tall and handsome, even at that age of maybe twelve years old. One of the pair had his arm around a slight girl, Hispanic, with short black hair and glasses. She leaned into the boy's arm as if it felt totally natural to be there.

  The other boy had his arm around the girl in the center of the picture. She was maybe ten years old and very pretty. Bree noticed she looked a lot like the shy one with glasses. Sisters, maybe? Then there was a Hispanic boy who looked like the two girls. There was a similarity not just in their coloring, but in the serious expressions, the shyness. Then two other boys. The first was a skinny beanpole of a kid holding two fishing poles and mugging at the camera. The other was a handsome blonde boy who was pretending to catch the fish the center girl held.

  She counted again: six boys, three girls. Henry and Helena and their childhood friends in happier days.

  She put the picture down. There was something so sad about seeing Henry, now dead, and Helena, now senile, as bright young kids. She wondered what had happened to the other kids in the picture. Did they all still live in Pajaro Bay? Would she meet them at Henry's funeral? Would they rally around to help Helena now?

  She noticed the box from Henry's desk in Sacramento was sitting on the floor next to her. It hadn't been sealed, and the box flaps gaped open. She propped the photograph up against a pencil cup and opened the box.

  The first thing she saw were his cards. She pulled out the rubber-banded stack of recipe-type cards. "These aren't recipes, Kid," she remembered his rumbling voice saying the first time he'd caught her staring at the stack. "They're something far more important."

  She rifled through them, stopping at favorite ones. The councilman with the big ego who always wanted a table where he could show off for the crowd: Likes chiles, but not as hot as he thinks he does, was scribbled below his name. Then there was the son of a longtime customer: Allergic to walnuts. Wash everything TWICE before cooking for him. She found Helena's: My Kit, no garlic; loved the gruyere last time. Butterscotch Girl. Some of the cards had a dozen notes on them, some only one. But each was Henry's attempt to learn how to cook for them, to make them happy.

  Her own card was halfway through the stack: loves ancho chiles, hates blueberry seeds, and artichokes make her laugh.

  She put the stack of cards down and went to bed.

  "HERE, KITTY, KITTY!"

  The voice was close, seeming to come from the floor.

  "Here, kitty, kitty!"

  She opened her eyes and felt for her phone. In the dark the numbers lit up: 2:23.

  "In the morning?" she said out loud.

  She could see Maisy was awake, but not alarmed.

  "Here, kitty, kitty!"

  The voice outside was plaintive, calling. Was that Helena? It didn't quite sound like her.

  Bree scrambled into her jeans and put on her right sneaker. The voice seemed to come from low down, near the floor. Maisy got up and went over to the kitchenette with its skirted sink.

  Bree turned back to the bed, looking for her left shoe.

  When she turned back around, the dog was gone.

  "Hey!" she shouted. Still wearing only one shoe, she went over to the sink and lifted the skirt. Under the sink the door to the outside was still swinging.

  "Maisy! Come back!"

  She shoved the sneaker on her foot. She had to go around to the other door and out that way. The noise was coming from the driveway.

  There was a woman there, not Helena. This woman wore a pink bathrobe, and was bent over to peer in the bushes.

  "Here, kitty, kitty!"

  Bree shone the flashlight on her, and the woman twirled around.

  "Who are you?"

  Bree could have asked her the same question, but then realized she didn't need to. The beam of the flashlight played over the woman's face, casting a yellow glow over her features. This was the little girl holding the fish in the picture.

  "I'm Bree Taylor. I'm a friend of Helena's. Did you lose your cat?"

  The woman looked at her. "I don't have a cat," she said, disgusted at the absurdity of the question.

  "You were calling for your cat. Unless your dog is named Kitty, Kitty?" That went right over the woman's head.

  "I don't have a cat! Who are you? Why are you here?" Her voice was getting higher and higher, ending in a shout.

  This felt eerily like the first conversation she'd had with Helena. If you think this one is out of it, you should see the one next door, Wade had said.

  "Do you live next door?" she asked the woman.

  "Of course I do!"

  "Would you like to go home now?" She looked at Maisy, who was wagging her tail at the woman. "Maisy can take you home."

  The woman looked down at Maisy. "Hi, Maisy. Henry's Maisy. Come with Sophie and have a snack."

  Sophie wandered over to the hedge growing next to the driveway and plunged into it.

  Maisy went in after her.

  "Wait!" Bree followed, squeezing through the gap in the plants to find herself in the garden of the little adobe house she'd seen from the street before.

  The woman led the way up the stairs and into the house, Maisy following eagerly, presumably for that treat.

  When they got inside, Bree could see they were in the kitchen. She could also see that Sophie was even more disheveled than she'd first appeared. Her bathrobe had a tear in it, and her hair was wild. Her eyes seemed a bit unfocused, the way Helena's did.

  "Are you alone here?" Bree asked loudly and clearly. "Is someone here to help you?"

  "Papa is sleeping," she said.

  "Good," Bree said, lowering her voice.

  "Sit down," Sophie said.

  "I should go," Bree said, but the woman didn't listen, so Bree sat down at the kitchen table.

  The table was covered in papers. At first glance it just looked like clutter, until Bree sat down and looked at the papers.

  They were watercolor paintings, washes of color over crisp pencil sketches. The work had been done on regular printer paper, and the edges curled up. The first one that caught her eye was a blue jay perched on a rusty fence. Just a few strokes of the paintbrush had managed to convey the energy of the bird, the harshness of the fence wire, and the light of the sun shining down on them.

  "Sophie, these are beautiful! Really beautiful. Are you an artist?"

  She shook her head. "Papa says no."

  "Well, your papa's wrong." She held up a picture of a cat. This was a black cat, and the darkness of the subject should have made the watercolor just a muddy mess, but it wasn't. Somehow she'd made the wash of color suggest the curve of muscle in the animal's shoulder. And its eyes, vivid green and staring, seemed to be issuing a challenge to the viewer.

  "I will make
you some of my sopaipillas," Sophie announced.

  "I don't think so, Sophie. It's almost three in the morning."

  Sophie wandered around the kitchen, opening cupboards and then closing them again.

  "What are you looking for?"

  "My flour. I need the flour to make the sopaipillas."

  "Oh. Are sopaipillas a bread?"

  She looked pityingly at Bree. "You never had sopaipillas?"

  Bree shook her head.

  "They are…," she paused, as if struggling for the word. "They are sweet," she finally said.

  "Ah. A pastry? Or a cookie?" Bree got up and came into the kitchen. It had once been a cheerful place, with ancient oak cabinets and countertops made of glossy red tiles. The floor was of a cream tile, much like the chocolate ones next door. Interspersed in the floor pattern were little red tiles with cream flowers on them.

  But one of the cabinets hung loose on its hinges, and there were piles of dishes on the countertop and in the sink. The room smelled musty, and the clutter of newspapers and empty cans overwhelmed the prettiness of the room, so it felt more sad than the original cheerfulness it had obviously been designed to convey.

  Sophie was still rummaging in the cabinets. "I need oil, and…," another pause, a long one, with mutters of "sweeties, candies, azúcar," until "sugar!" she said in triumph, obviously happy to remember the word.

  Bree put a hand gently on her shoulder. She could feel the boniness under the pink bathrobe. If she had been making candies, obviously none of them were getting eaten by her.

  "Would you like to come over for breakfast in the morning?" she asked softly. "I'll make something for you and Helena."

  No response. She kept rummaging.

  "Let's sit down," she said softly.

  "Okay," Sophie said agreeably. She let Bree lead her over to the dining table.

  Should she try to wake up the woman's father? Or just make a quick exit?

  Sophie put her head in her hands. Like she had with Helena earlier, Maisy sat next to her and put her head on her lap. "Oh, you are a pretty dog!" Sophie said. she buried her fingers in Maisy's fur. "So pretty."